Night Watch

Two crimes, one night, no connection between them, and the job is to keep both from ending badly. That is the shape of "Night Watch". Sgt Evans picks up a tip that a filling station attendant is marked for a revenge shooting, arranged to look like an accident, while a couple of low-level thieves stumble into the score of a lifetime: fifteen hundred watches, lifted in one go. But neither crime is glamorous, which is rather the point of the pair of them. Both threads run through the small hours, and neither waits for the other. It is a long night, and the episode means every minute of it.

The twin tracks give the episode its rhythm, cutting between the plan to kill and the theft that has already happened. Warren Clarke's Det. Sgt. Stirling gets real screen time here, and Clarke, who would later spend years playing Dalziel, already has the stillness that suits both sides of the law. Rex Robinson's Mike Stratton and Phil McCall's Jimmie Boyd carry the small-time side, with Susan Littler, Dennis Handby and Colin McCormack filling out the night shift. The tip comes in the usual way, from the usual sources, and the squad has learned to treat such things carefully.

Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, Frank Cox directed, and the regulars go about their business without fuss: Windsor's Watt, Meredith's Evans, Rigby's Snow, Mallard's Nesbitt. There is no glamour in the hour, and no need for any.

Fifteen hundred watches is a lot of watches, and a man's life is a man's life. The episode treats both with the same flat seriousness, which is exactly right for a force that never knows which call will be the one that matters. The episode earns its title: by the end, a whole night has passed, and you have watched every hour of it.